Will we have robot co-workers in the future?

Traditional industrial robots are heavy, dangerous and difficult to programme. ‘Cobots’, or collaborative robots, on the other hand, are next-generation robots that work alongside people. “Having teams of humans and robots working together provides advantages for both sides,” says Dr Petar Kormushev, who heads the Robot Intelligence Lab at Imperial College London. Here, he talks about how humans are teaching cobots through imitation, how robots harness AI to make self-improvements—and how virtual reality might be the next frontier in working with robots.